Making Florida's class-size measure irrelevant

Monday

Nov 27, 2017 at 7:00 AM

It seems like every year the Legislature gives cracking the state’s class-size amendment a try. This year, the effort may come from a different tangent.

In 2002, state voters OK’d a constitutional amendment that set limits on class size, because lawmakers would not. The amendment mandated that there would be no more than 18 kids in pre-K through third grade; 22 kids in grades four through eight; and 25 students in grades nine through 12.

Proponents were certain that the amendment would improve Florida’s education system, spitting better students out the other end. Opponents warned that passing the amendment would bankrupt the state.

We’re not certain how we could measure student improvement since the amendment passed. However, the cost is clearly quantitative.

The Legislature had to pony up an extra $1.7 billion the first year to fund it, with about half going to facilities and half to operating funds. That has continued. This school year, the cost is $3.1 billion. The total cost since 2002 is $39.8 billion.

The effort at extracting schools from the class-size mandates this year will likely come from the Florida Constitution Revision Commission. Commission member Patricia Levesque is CEO of the Jeb Bush-backed Foundation of Excellence Education. The group believes class limits don’t mean better learning.

Her shtick to make the deal more digestible is to promise all the dollars saved from fudging class sizes will go directly into higher teacher pay. And, if you think about it, teachers’ jobs would become more difficult.

What’s important to know should the amendment find its way to the ballot is that the class size mandate is pretty much a joke these days — watered down through the years by small legislative loopholes and exceptions.

The most popular ideas from the class-size opponents is to average the class sizes over an entire school or an entire school district. While that is expressly forbidden in the amendment language, some districts are using “algorithms” rather than averages.

In 2013, the Legislature opened another fissure in the class-size volcano by allowing a select number of schools to exceed the size limits without being fined. The exception was for innovative schools such as magnets — the key word being “choice.”

And since that time, you can’t imagine how many public schools are now defined as “choice” schools.

Another loophole legislated in was that “extracurricular” classes could fudge the cap. Language classes became that, as did marine biology and, finally, Advanced Placement classes could opt out too.

Some school districts have discovered that it’s simply cheaper to pay the state fines than hire the extra teachers necessary to remain in compliance. All this really means is that the potential amendment is sufficiently diluted to make its real impact questionable.

The bottom line is not who gets the dollars and how. Florida’s education issue is simple funding, and we’re 41st in the nation in student spending.